reform

You, too, can write your own state constitution, in 149 characters or less.

A new California reform group, rethinkcali.com, launched today a Virtual Constitutional Convention, where participants will use Twitter and the Web, through a social organizing technology called “crowdsourcing,” to write a new state constitution. (See full news release below.)

They may be on to something here.

Proponents of a ballot measure that would have convened a Constitutional Convention where actual people would sit together in the same room for months on end failed to gather enough signatures to qualify.

But if Californians could draw up a functioning state operations manual via a cell phone app, now, that’s an animal of an entirely different color. No dreary meetings. No policy white papers to read.

The site organizers at the New America Foundation, a liberal-leaning policy think tank, promise prizes, scholarships and “even a few minutes of fame.”

The group says the effort is the brainchild of Los Angeles-based social entrepreneur Anthony Rubenstein, a veteran of California’s ballot initiative process. He founded and led Californians for Clean Energy – Yes on Proposition 87 in 2006, and helped lead the “Coalition of Everyone Against Proposition 10” in 2008.